Re: Lots of questions

Lots of good points.. I'm just about to start a new campaign based on
spelljammer trade and I'm interested in more of this economic model..
has anyone already developed this?

I've started out simply so for... knocking at least 1 zero off the
proces of helms... basing repairs at the cost of 1 hitpoint per gp for
average quality repairs etc. what are people charging for basic food
stuff and the like? I remember one of the spelljammer cannon books
listed a labourers wages at 15gp a month... what about crewmen, ships
mages, weaponeers and the like?


Andrew




Richard Myers wrote:

>Spelljammer economics were fairly botched from the beginning.  Those who
>wrote the original sets expected that only luxury goods would be carried over
>such vast distances, but as someone only recently pointed out, merchants
>could make much more money by transporting valueable cargoes across merely
>planetary distances (imagine carrying loads of pepper in a medieval style
>campaign with your voyages lasting only a week or so, including loading
>times).  Most spelljamming cultures aren't self-sufficient.  Bral would
>require grain and cloth imports just to survive.  Imagine a small metropolis
>of only 30,000 mouths.  Assuming you had a few thousand farmers somewhere on
>the asteroid, you would still need in excess of 10,000 tons of grain every
>year in imports.  Assuming this were done by independent merchants, that
>would mean over 20 tradesmen would have to be landing full of grain every
>single day.  This type of commerce would have to be heavily subsidized by the
>local government.
>
>R.
>
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